Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s state visit to China later this month is intended to show that Turkey, as an international power, has interests well beyond its western alliances. But Ankara’s strong backing of China’s Uighur Muslim minority clouds the prospects for Turkish-Chinese relations.

The Iranian nuclear deal has broad trade implications for Eurasia. The pending lifting of sanctions would allow Iran to take advantage of its favorable geographic position, as it straddles the commercial crossroads connecting Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

One year ago, Georgia signed an historic free-trade deal with the European Union that many saw as the ticket for finally pulling the country’s largely agricultural economy out of its post-Soviet slump. But so far, how fast that deal can help transform Georgian agriculture is open to doubt.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey are not the most popular leaders in the world today, but they are certainly popular with each other. Their mutual affinity is not just the result of personal chemistry, it also stems from a shared craving for unchecked power.

The results of Turkey’s June 7 parliamentary elections denied a majority to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party. It also diversified parliament’s demographic mix: the election of three ethnic Armenian deputies is being heralded as an important breakthrough for the country and its fraught relations with its Armenian minority.

Entrepreneurs from Turkey have enjoyed success in Turkmenistan, a market known mostly for natural gas rents and megalomaniacal vanity projects. But for all of their past business achievements, a growing number of Turkish investors are experiencing trouble in Ashgabat’s notoriously fickle business climate.

For more than a decade, I taught an area studies course at the Foreign Service Institute that focused on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. My students were US diplomats, military staff, and government workers headed to assignments in the Caucasus. Several classes focused on the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the First World War, and Armenia.